


you must first belong nowhere

by sofriel



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Memory Alteration, Natasha-centric, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 13:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4436651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sofriel/pseuds/sofriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quicksilver, candlewax—define yourself in motion, fluid and neverending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you must first belong nowhere

What they don’t know: there is no “real” Natasha Romanoff underneath the layers. There are just layers, all the way down, and quicksilver, candlewax that melts and shifts with the flame. 

You remember being a child ballerina, and you remember being a child assassin. Your body performs pliés as easily as roundhouse kicks. Both of those knowledges are in your muscles, in your bones somehow. 

At one time it worried you. You tried to sort through the tangled multiplicity of strings that made up your memories, to figure out where they came from, which could be ruled out from reality. Tried to find what came _before_ —before you were made into someone who was quicksilver. 

The best covers have some element of truth to them. You have been so many people. You were taught to do so, since the beginning (the end) of the childhood you can’t remember. Taught to sink into a persona so deep that even torture can’t pull out the real you, because the real you doesn’t exist. There’s nothing there to reveal. 

How do you take a child and turn them into a void, a lack of self? How do you hollow out what was once a person? 

There is no such thing as desire among the Widows. Desire is for those who are not human-shaped weapons. Everything there is purposeful. Friendships are alliances, sex is a tool, every conversation is intelligence. Store it away, it may be useful later. Inclinations are made to be twisted into an advantage—this is how you survive. 

When you are young, you do not question that purpose. Even your survival is only for the sake of the Red Room, for the nation. You must survive because so much effort has gone into making you. It is a debt you owe. That is what they tell you, and you believe it for so long. It is amazing, you think later, what you accepted then. 

If you fragment someone’s memory enough, if there is not enough of them to hold onto, you can make them into anyone. You can make them belong anywhere. The danger is, they may want to keep some of that belonging. 

The order of things unravels slowly, unevenly, and it is so subtle that you do not know it until you are staring at it full of holes. So you reach in with your hands and you make the gaps larger. You are one string among many but it takes only one to undo the whole. 

They created their own downfall, you think. They taught you that the world was messy and grotesque and you learned that it was, far more than you could have imagined in the lessons that may or may not have been real. They did not intend for you to realize that they too are human, messy and grotesque. 

So you take out as many of them with you as you can, and you run. Your whole life has prepared you for this in exactly the way that it has not. You are many people so that you do not have to be one person. Spread yourself thin across your covers, there is no core to hold on to. Everything still has a purpose, but now survival is for its own sake. 

This is the second stage of your life: where once all was for unquestioned authority, now survival is a law unto itself. Stay alive, because life is all you have that is yours for certain. 

The Black Widow is as much a construction as Natalie Rushman will be. That is how you deal with the discomfort that is your upbringing: you make it a monument. You take the name and you make it yours and you make people whisper it in fear. 

Chaos is the highest form of destruction. When survival is your only guiding light, right and wrong are two turn lanes onto the same street. More than enough people are willing to pay your way for their own gain, and why should that bother you? You are just trying to survive, too. 

Sometimes you catch yourself second-guessing. When you hear children’s voices screaming as flames dance in the sky, a part of you that you didn’t realize was there lets out a scream along with them. You vanish off the radar, deep cover, and you mourn. For them, and for the you that you are only now discovering, another you that you might have known for years now, if not for—

After that you are more selective about the jobs you take. You tell yourself it is for the name, that the Black Widow deserves to be above dealing with mere criminal squabbles. You are a practiced liar and it works as well with yourself as with anyone else. Besides, you were made to meddle in the affairs of nations, so why not embrace that destiny? There is enough corruption in the world to last you a lifetime of work. 

You have become careless when S.H.I.E.L.D. manages to show up on your doorstep. Staying alive is only a habit to you now, not a strong enough pole to hold your compass arrow straight. Clint Barton knows this—in your penetrating gaze you can see that he knows it most intimately. Perhaps that is why when he offers a new north to cling to, you reach out with the hand of a new person to take his. 

You like Nick Fury. When you meet him you’re left with the uncomfortable sensation of his penetrating gaze, like he’s seen straight through you, but you recognize him as a kindred spirit. His compartmentalization is nearly as thorough as yours, the way you both play yourself on the stage of life for others. You think he recognizes that in you, too. 

Being good is sometimes difficult but also strangely familiar. The new Natasha Romanoff that you are building, the one founded on the tears unable to quench a fire and on the hand daring to reach out, stretches her muscles. Being good means rules, and this you are familiar with from your earliest days. It is listening to the sounds that issue from the void of self inside you that is the hard part. 

The world grows only stranger and stranger. There are monsters and magic and aliens, but there is also: trust, and that is far more alien than anything you have encountered. It feels like delicate glass that has been placed into your hands, something you have never held before, and you are terrified that you will destroy it, because destruction is the thing you are best at. 

And then, suddenly, it all goes to pieces and you are awash in a sea of madness with nothing to hold onto but that trust. The bubble is burst, and you feel horribly foolish for ever thinking you could accept authority without question again. If the rock on which you have built this self was not real all along, then what does that make you? You have blood on your hands, so much blood, how could you ever think that rewriting your story would cover that up?

So you fling yourself wide open to the world. Let them see you in your entirety, every person that you have ever been. Open a new book. Embrace the void at the center of you—there is no you beyond what you do in the world. That is your responsibility now, and the whole world will hold you accountable.

Your early attempts are full of heart but clumsy. You are not sure you know how to do things without that old purpose, survival. Now there is a new purpose: to live. But it is hard, and you fall back on old habits. Or, afraid of those habits, you throw yourself too eagerly into the unknown. When he wants to run away, you jump on it. Leave this all behind? The part of you that wakes up in fear of your own past says yes, yes, yes. 

But you’ve fallen into that trap again. The one that says you can escape in the night and shed your own skin. You thought that love would protect you from that, but it turns out love, too, is something that you _do_. 

So keep trying. Don’t hide from yourself. You are learning that even if you are quicksilver, that is still a _you_ that is worth protecting. The best covers have some element of truth to them. Seize that kernel of truth: that is where your heart is found. 

You cannot help your past, and you are working on looking it in the eye without flinching. You may belong nowhere, but nowhere is still a place and you are not the only one who belongs there. 

Quicksilver, candlewax—define yourself in motion, fluid and neverending.

You make your own future one step at a time.


End file.
